It's been a long time since I've written about magic, but I only write when I have relevant information.  This January I've been exceptionally busy, and I haven't had time; I only had last weekend (29th-31st).  This coincided with the Alara-Block-inna-pack release event, and I gained insights I'd like to share.

Going into this, I had about 150tix on my account along with zero Alara Block boosters (called big A from now on), and I had one random QP from early January when I briefly logged on and won a constructed 8-man in two hours.

On Feb. 2nd 2010, four days later, I'm taking a break from magic and writing.  In four days I achieved 14 QP, played in seven 64-man bigA release events, and did about six additional bigA drafts.  I spent about 70tix just entering events during the long weekend, but was able to recoup the majority and still end with 10 foil packs of bigA after going through my normal bigA.  Yeah, I was double eventing.

These are how I got my 15 QP:

1 -- constructed 8-man early Jan.
1 -- constructed 8-man standard with jund (sold packs for tix back)
1 -- constructed daily event 3-1 playing jund (sold packs for tix back)
3 -- top 8 tempest block constructed challenge using a bad survival-death deck with only two Mox Diamonds
1 -- winning TSE draft

3 -- winning bigA drafts (one swiss, two 'normal')
5 -- placing 2nd of 64 people in a bigA 64-man release event

At the end I had 97 tix left, along with a Rafiq of the Many, Sharuum the Hegemon, Sen Triplets, Godsire, Noble Hierarch and Maelstrom Pulse that I haven't sold.  Plus 10 foil bigA packs.  By measure of tix, I 'lost,' but my overall account value increased.  (And I did it in four days, the quickest I've ever gotten 15 QP.)

This is the Jund list I used with a slightly changed mixture of basics:

Jund

Sideboard might need work

Creatures 4 Putrid Leech 4 Sprouting Thrinax 4 Bloodbraid Elf 2 Thornling 1 Rampaging Baloths 15 cards Other Spells 4 Lightning Bolt 3 Terminate 4 Blightning 3 Maelstrom Pulse 3 Garruk Wildspeaker 3 Bituminous Blast 20 cards

Lands 4 Savage Lands 3 Verdant Catacombs 4 Dragonskull Summit 4 Rootbound Crag 3 Forest 3 Swamp 4 Mountain 25 cards Sideboard 2 Duress 1 Spellbreaker Behemoth 3 Jund Charm 1 Maelstrom Pulse 1 Rampaging Baloths 2 Broodmate Dragon 1 Thought Hemorrhage 4 Great Sable Stag 15 cards

Now this intro. isn't a brag, it's my supporting credentials regarding the transition of Alara draft into it's new form. 

(Skip this if you are convinced I have something to say about the new bigA drafts).  Specific stats.  I placed 2nd in an additional bigA draft in the 8-man room, as well as straight losing two more.  Of the seven big-A 64 man events (that I had to enter hours in advance and essentially plan my long weekend around), I finished in the top 8 -- 2nd place once.  Three times I lost in the first round (usually from mana issues), twice I lost in the second round (2 packs bigA), and once I lost in the third round in a close third game.  This means over four days I drafted about 15 triple bigA drafts (hazy, didn't keep track of event numbers because I didn't expect to do so well).  I won first or second about half of the time.

Time for the Analysis Now

For both bigA triple and simple ACR, I find when drafting there are four major issues to deal with for a successful deck.

1.) Mana Base
2.) Bombs
3.) Removal
4.) Theme

Mana Base
In simple ACR you could concentrate on triple lands on pack one, first pick Exotic Orchard or Rupture Spire in the second pack while maybe getting a general land cycler like Gleam of Resistance or (Sylvan Bounty late), and then pick up one or two in-color borderposts and/or color committed land finding creatures in the Reborn pack.  In bigA, this strategy fails.

I've had to choose Rupture Spire vs. Triple Land vs. Landcycler more than once, and my answer has been different depending on how much I know about the rest of my deck.  In pack one, it's spire.  In pack two, it's the triple land if I'm in solid three colors, and in pack three it's been the landcycler because I needed a big guy who could attack.

The biggest difference between bigA and ACR is how you prioritize a mana base.  Frankly drafts I lost first round I had too many bombs, great removal, and tons of filler.  What I didn't have was mana fixing.  My mana defeated me.  Now what this tells me is the mana base itself is at least as important as the bombs in bigA.  In ACR you could auto-take the big bomby rare and pass on the mana, since you had a clear game plan for achieving your mana base.  In bigA you've got additional tension going into the draft -- you don't know your colors AND you know need mana fixing.

As an example, in a 64 man bigA event I scrubbed out the first round.  I was playing 19 lands and 3 borderposts in dedicated esper with 2 Esper Charm, 2 Tower Gargoyle, Sen Triplets, Nemesis of Reason, 2 Telemin Performance, 2 Etherium Sculptors, etc.  The problem is I got too fancy and greedy with potential Sen Triplets (and Aerie Mystics shroud), all my borderposts were Firewild, and one of my lands was Savage Lands.  Two of the three games I never drew a plains.  In pack one I prioritized getting good mana, but it happened to be in Jund colors, since that was the only mana fixing I saw.  In pack two I prioritized bombs and removal, and suddenly I was esper.  My Mana Base strategy destroyed my draft by going against my theme and bombs.

Cards...... Early mana fixing.. ...  Don't do that.

As important as Mana Base is, you can't prioritize it in the first pack like you do in ACR.  The only mana base first picks are Rupture Spire and Exotic Orchard.  In bigA triple, you don't take early triple lands, borderposts, or land cyclers because you need to know your colors first!  That's as clear as I can be.  You should still value fixing above 'filler' in the first pack where Panoramas often come late, but you need to prioritize bombs and removal.  Yes, if you don't see a big mythic bomb or awesome uncommon it's OK to pick the fixer.  However, in the first pack of bigA I've faced the following choices:

vs  ______  vs
vs  ______  vs

I believe the correct choices are passing on the mana fixing and firmly establishing colors and theme in pack one.  This is exact opposite of my strategy in ACR where a first pick triple land beats most of the cards.

At what point can you de-prioritize the mana base?  When you have six -- three lands and three non-lands.  Panoramas count as 0.5 towards lands.  So one triple land, one Unstable Frontier, and two Panoramas combined with two land cycling creatures and a borderpost means you are set.  Until that time, you should be taking mana base cards over weaker rares and solid creatures.


Bombs
The problem with bigA is the Alara Reborn bombs are super powerful and multi-colored.  That means if you open an ARB bomb, you have colors!   Cards like Identity Crisis, Unscythe, Killer of Kings, and Retaliator Griffin are tons more powerful when you can draft around them.  You also have the potential for hitting little to no rare bombs, as twice I've only opened relatively weak shard and conflux rares in all my packs.  That's OK though!  Basically anything with high mana cost or lots of colored mana is a huge bomb.  Elder Mastery, Vagrant Plowbeasts, Drastic Revelation, Mask of Riddles, and even Sigil Captain fit this bill.  When you can early pick them and draft around them, suddenly they are better than at the end of pack two or the start of pack three when they are usually off-color or off-theme.

The most important thing to take away from this section is that cards previously thought of as 'marginal' due to their color requirements (when you'd already picked colors) in ACR are really and truly pack one bombs in bigA.  This in turn means if you are drafting correctly, no matter how bad you think the packs are, you will have cards strong enough to function as bombs.  You should not worry about the higher variance of bigA giving you 'all crap' in the packs and dismiss the format for this.  ACR uncommons and commons get much stronger when in the first pack.  The amount of re-evaluation I did was surprising.  Sojourners are now awesome, for example.

So don't worry, your deck will have bombs, and they will likely be creatures.    

........ Realize, you can first pick one of these now too.

Removal
It's easy to get caught drafting a bunch of strategy defining bombs in pack one, and then scrambling for a good mana base in packs two and three.  However, after about fourth mana base card you enter a sphere of diminishing returns which exposes a potential weakness -- your deck needs removal.  If Naya, you can cheat and call the pump spells removal, going with stuff like Sigil Blessing, Colossal Might, and Resounding Roar with 17 creatures.  Those pump spells tend to go later than simple red damage or black 'kill' it spells.  I've won bigA drafts like that.  

If you aren't Naya, your removal is as important as your bombs, because someone else at the table is Naya.  Careful, you could get nothing for removal unless you pay attention.  By pack three, if you don't have cheap removal spells, even bad ones like Unsummon, Wretched Banquet, Dark Temper, or Crystallization, you need them.  Provided you have three mana fixing cards, your priority in pack three should be cheap functional removal above all other considerations.

You'll also have to make choices you aren't used to, like Resounding Thunder vs Fiery Fall vs Magma Spray vs Skeletonize (yeah, this one happened to me!  I picked Fiery Fall).  Use casting cost as your metric; and depending on where you are with the draft, make the choice based on your current mana curve.

One last tip here:  Ignite Disorder is better than people I've been drafting with think.  In ACR--Conflux it was common to see it table, but in bigA it's as good as Celestial Purge.  Why?  Everyone plays two drops, and the Alara Reborn 'blade-cycle' two drops are the best.  (They are now potentially in every pack.)  Four out of five of them are either blue or white, which means you will never lack targets and occasional two-for-one their two drop and one/three drop.

  Better than you think.



Theme
Which shard are you?  In ARB, you could succeed with Naya, Esper, or five-color.  With Volcanic Ultimatum or Thrinaxes, Jund was ok, but both Grixis and Bant were not the winner's choice.

Mashing the packs into bigA has a curious effect -- Grixis is now as good as Naya and Esper.  In ACR, I maintained the only way to get a good grixis deck was by opening Cruel Ultimatum and shaping your draft around it.  That is not so in bigA.  All the good Grixis control cards that hid inside Conflux and Alara Reborn can now occupy all three packs.  You can potentially get four Sedraxis Alchemist and four Grixis Sojourners (I've done this) for an amazing tempo deck.  In fact I never noticed how great the Sojourners were until I faced them on the other side of the table -- 4/3 for 4 mana is really good in bigA. 

What about Jund?  More viable than before, but not worth forcing.  There are more chances for early devour spells and late token generation cards to power them.  Third pack (Dragon Fodders) are great when you first pick Voracious Dragon.  You can also first pick Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund, (Charnelhorde Wurm), and Lavalanche now.  Malfegor is usually an audible into Grixis though.  That said, pure Jund in bigA is not where I want to be.  For control, you are better off in Grixis, and for aggro you are better off in Naya.  Usually the 'jund' archetype is subsumed into a four color mish-mash where it combines with or splashes a little of either Grixis or Naya.  With proper mana base shaping, this is easy.

Bant is bad, and you don't want to be here unless you open a strong mythic like Jenara, Asura of War.  It's easier to make good Bant in bigA, but even with more pack variance the problem of getting good in-color removal is still there.  You aren't likely to see multiple Path to Exile or Bant Charm.  Bant tri-color rares are also weak... Clarion Ultimatum and Wargate aren't good arguments.

The five-color archetype isn't as viable because of the nature of mana-fixing.  Still, I'm definitely drafting it with a first pick Maelstrom mythic, and I'd consider it with a first pick Fusion Elemental in a weaker pack. You are less likely to see Obelisks, and people will fight for them if they need mana fixing in later packs.  That said, you can still do it if you get Rupture Spires and Armillary Spheres.  You won't see five color as often, as it's easier to get a shard (and with more viable shards, people aren't fighting over Naya as hard).

Theme-wise, the bigA draft metagame is actually more interesting and varied compared with ACR.

This concludes my current analysis of bigA.  Hopefully this will help you with the upcoming foil drafts.  Thanks for reading.